Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Nick Thomas-Symonds

2nd reading & 2nd reading - Day 1
Monday 15th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am grateful for that, and when the Home Secretary returns to the Home Office, I would be grateful if she could dig out the letter and respond. That would be extremely useful—it was sent on 29 January, for reference.

[Chris Bryant]

As my right hon. Friend knows, I, and I think we as a party, support clause 2, because we believe that emergency workers should not be subject to the terrible assaults that there have been over the years. But this does pose a problem, because a lot of women who work in shops are subjected to exactly the same problems and are often terrified to go into work. We had a terrible incident in the Co-op in Penygraig less than a year ago. Is there not a job of work that we need to do to make sure that all workers, but in particular women workers working in shops, are also protected?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I will come on to that issue in a moment, when I have some proposals to put forward.

Ministers risk sending out an awful message on the level of importance that they attach to violent crime. The Government want a maximum penalty of 10 years for damage to statues. No Government should ever send out a signal that the safety of a statue carries greater importance in our laws than the safety of women, but, as currently drafted, this Bill would allow someone to receive a sentence of up to 10 years for attacking the statue of a slave trader when rape sentences start at five years. That does not reflect the priorities of the people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I will always bow to the right hon. Gentleman’s guidance on parliamentary procedure, but we took a final decision to vote against this Bill. Let me say to Government Members that I will make it clear when I agree with the Government on something, but as I move on to other aspects of my speech, I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will see that there are other parts of the Bill that also cause deep concern; he need only wait for that.

[Chris Bryant]

I want to take my right hon. Friend back to the emergency workers legislation. One of the difficulties about the way in which it works is that magistrates courts can only sentence up to six months and the Government have still failed to change the law to allow them to issue longer sentences in certain circumstances. The danger is that increasing the sentence will make absolutely no difference whatever, unless the Government do what they could already have done in the last two years.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Having understood the attitude of the Government in 2018, perhaps it is not surprising how slow this has been.

Coronavirus Act 2020 (Review of Temporary Provisions)

Debate between Chris Bryant and Nick Thomas-Symonds

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Yes, I have indeed installed the app. It has taken a significant time and a significant amount of wasted money to actually appear, but it has finally appeared and I would encourage all hon. and right hon. Members to download it.

[Chris Bryant]

I would like to point out to the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) that the app actually works better in Wales, because all the tests can be properly downloaded in Wales, unlike in England. And while my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) is at it, can he just point out that the so-called concession that the Government have given to Members such as the hon. Member for Wycombe, with whom I agree on many of these issues today, is nothing? It is not worth the paper it is not written on. We would like to see something in writing about what the consultation with the House will really look like.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The lesson with promises from this Government is that we always need them in writing, and even then they are not necessarily delivered.

Acquired Brain Injury

Debate between Chris Bryant and Nick Thomas-Symonds

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered acquired brain injury.

You might have noticed, Mr Rosindell, that we have considered this matter once or twice already over the past year or two, but today we are looking at some specific elements of acquired brain injury. As all right hon. and hon. Members will know, brain injury can relate to so many parts of Government: the Ministry of Defence, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Education, the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office and so on. Today we have the Health Minister before us, so I am keen to focus on health-related issues.

I know that many right hon. and hon. Members will have been approached by the Headway charity, clinicians who work in their area, patients or carers of people who have suffered a brain injury, and will want to make a contribution, so I do not intend to speak at great length. I am passionately conscious of the fact that, since I first became involved in this issue in Parliament three years ago, I have met so many amazing people—not only clinicians and people who work in the charity sector, but patients who have had brain injuries and spoken about what that experience is like. It is so important to hear that experience directly from individuals.

One particularly poignant aspect of brain injury is that in the vast majority of cases it is completely invisible. Yesterday, I met Tom Hutton, who is here—I know we are not meant to refer to the Public Gallery, Mr Rosindell, but I have already and have got away with it. He was training on his bike for an Ironman a few years ago and had a collision with a small lorry. He was in an induced coma for a week. There is not a mark on his head. No one who saw him at work or in the street, including a Department for Work and Pensions assessor, would have the faintest idea that he had had a brain injury, or an injury of any kind.

The fascinating thing he spoke to me about is that he has to talk to himself all the time. One symptom of brain injury is phenomenal fatigue, and if the sufferer does not see the fatigue coming, they can experience phenomenal depression, or dysphoria, as it is called.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend not only on securing this debate, but on his fantastic campaigning work in this area. On the symptoms being invisible, Departments, particularly the Department for Work and Pensions, cannot pick up precisely how such injuries affect day-to-day life, and that needs to be improved.

[Chris Bryant]

Yes. The all-party parliamentary group on acquired brain injury—I see that two of the vice-chairs are in the Chamber—has been campaigning to ensure that everyone who does any kind of assessment for the Department for Work and Pensions, whether for personal independence payments, the employment and support allowance, or any other benefit, has a full training in acquired brain injury, so that they understand the variable nature of the condition.

One element of the personality change that may come about is that somebody with a brain injury might be desperate to please the person in front of them, so they might want to give what they think is the “correct answer” to the question being asked by the official. That can give a misleading idea of what that individual’s abilities are.

I have not asked Tom whether it is all right to say all this today—I see that he is nodding, so it is fine. When the Duracell battery inside someone’s head is running low, they talk to themselves to try to re-energise it, but that uses even more energy. That can lead to a vicious cycle: further depression and anxiety makes it more difficult to recharge the battery, in turn making it more difficult to get better.

There are others who have had much more dramatic and traumatic injuries, perhaps where something has penetrated the skull. However, in the vast majority of cases, the injury will be inside the brain. A fundamental part of what we have to address is how the mind and the personality sit inside the brain. Right hon. and hon. Members might have seen the television series “MotherFatherSon”, which deals with someone who has had a massive aneurysm and then a stroke. Lots of things in the programme are not entirely accurate, but many families and individuals have to cope with the very real element of personality change. I met a wonderful woman three months ago told me that she wished that her old self would come back. She could remember what her old self was like, but it is not the person she now is. She just does not know how to recreate that personality inside herself. Again, it is this thing of talking to yourself all the time.

If there has been impairment of the executive functions due to a brain injury to the frontal lobes, particularly in teenagers or as the young brain is still developing, it can lead to all sorts of other problems in terms of employability, and being able to engage with the wider world and their family. Sometimes people share far too much information; sometimes they are far too timid about being able to share information.